From LSD Brain to Dead Autopilot, Fringe Premiere Skirts Reality

When it comes to fringe science--that occasionally dubious study of mind control, teleportation,invisibility and reanimation--the only true expert might be Dr. Frankenstein. That is, until J.J. Abrams moved beyond the sci-fi-bending universe of Lost--the Large Hadron Collider, time travel and all--and set out to create Fringe, the new X-Files-esque show that debuted last night on Fox. Now, he's trying to convince the disbelievers that science and technology have advanced to the point where anything is possible. While we wait for the return of Lost in 2009, PM's Hollywood Sci-Fi vs. Reality team geared up for a week-by-week breakdown of this cult "hit" in the making by asking real-world experts--from the FAA to the CDC, neurologists to geneticists--to deconstruct six of our biggest questions from the the most expensive pilot in TV history and separate the science from science fiction, and everything in between.

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(Warning to the DVR geeks: Spoilers ahead!)

Can an injected toxin infect everyone on a plane?

Abrams opens Fringe in much the same manner as another show we love--onboard a 150-passenger plane that's experiencing a fair amount of turbulence. A nervous diabetic injects himself with an insulin pen, which incites a far different reaction than controlled blood-sugar levels would. Instead, the skin begins to melt off his face, and as he flails for help, he projectile-vomits on a horrified flight attendant. Within moments, everyone on the plane is infected with the mysterious--and deadly--contagion.

Some chemicals can cause a rapid skin infection or necrosis, but none that result in this kind of down-to-the-bone, Indiana Jones-style mess, says Dr. Lisa Rotz, an infectious disease expert and director of bioterrorism preparedness at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

And as far as the contagious nature of the infection--which morphs into an airborne toxin in mere moments--Rotz confirms that the spread of the toxin as depicted on Fringe is officially impossible. "The only way for a virus to become airborne is if it were to move through the bloodstream at the point of injection and create an infection in the lungs that is then coughed or breathed out," she says. And that's not including the days-long incubation period needed for the bacteria to replicate to the point where it can cause illness. If this epidemic were a toxin, only those in contact with the original compounds--the diabetic and possibly the flight attendant--could be exposed, and that's assuming the chemicals could have made their way through the diabetic's body, into his stomach and out the other end in seconds. No puke is that potent.

Can you really fly and land a plane entirely on autopilot?

Fringe's ill-fated aircraft was on its way to Boston's Logan Airport from Hamburg, Germany, when disaster struck. Despite everyone--including the pilot--dying midflight, the aircraft landed right on time because of Logan's new Pearl Autopilot System. It's hard enough to believe that an international flight would be without delay these days--never mind the fact that no airline currently flies direct from Hamburg to Boston--but what about this cutting-edge autopilot? Although Logan Airport won 2008's Airport of the Year for its advancements in technology, including foreign "object" debris detection cameras and runways that can land planes in zero visibility, it doesn't have any Pearl system, according to Flavio Leo, Logan's manager of aviation planning. "We're always going to have the interplay of the airplane, pilot, technology on air and on ground, and the physical airport," he says.

"All airliners have autopilots and almost all are capable of following a programmed path to the destination airport," says Alison Duquette, a spokesperson for the Federal Aviation Administration. "But the plane will fly over the airport and then go on by, straight ahead, until it runs out of gas." While many large airline jets can land themselves after the pilot selects the right frequencies and manually engages the wheels and wing flaps within 10 miles of the airport, no current commercial autopilot will go from the en route phase to the landing phase without some human input.

Still, the flight technologies experts at the FAA aren't ruling out that possibility altogether. Completely automatic flights and landings are performed by the military all the time with their UAVs, Duquette notes. For a commercial airliner, however, extensive software updates and changes in the landing gear would be necessary to make a pilot obsolete--something that's not in the interest of public safety.

Would the CDC really burn a plane?

In Fringe's premiere episode, the CDC was the first in the plane, and after taking some air samples, the government agency set it ablaze on the runway--but even this is fabricated. In reality, state and local health departments are the first on the scene, and the CDC has to be invited in. Even then, they wouldn't actually be the ones with the torches.

"When appropriate, we make recommendations for ways to decontaminate things," says the CDC's Rotz. This would most likely involve quarantining the plane in a separate hanger or, at most, applying heat using autoclave-like equipment to burn off any hazardous contaminants before disposing of the plane. "It wouldn't be lighting a match."

Can LSD and probe-laden tanks connect your brain to the comatose?

After an explosion douses her boyfriend with synthetic chemicals that turn his skin clear and land him in a coma, FBI agent Olivia Dunham is desperate to get inside his head--literally. In order to see the face of his assailant, Dunham takes a drug cocktail that includes lysergic acid diethylamide (yes, that's LSD), then lies in a tank of water with an electromagnetic probe attached to her skull. It's a technique Dr. Walter Bishop calls synaptic transfer, or a shared dream state. Once Dunham is unconscious and her brainwaves are synchronized with her boyfriend's, she's able to access his memories--and get a crystal-clear look at the guy responsible for his condition (and that plane).

Doctors and researchers do have ways of monitoring brainwaves, but not in such a far-fetched way that would allow Olivia to chat up her boyfriend. "There is no current science that allows two people to share information directly between their brains, though admittedly, ketamine and LSD--both major hallucinogenic drugs--might make the user think she was sharing someone else's dreams and memories," says Dr. Mark Milstein, a neurologist and assistant professor of neurology at a major New York City hospital. At this point, the closest one can get is with the electroencephalogram (EEG), which uses multiple simultaneous scalp recorders to pick up electrical currents from the brain and find patterns that might help diagnose disorders like epilepsy. Other forms of this recording, says Milstein, focus on patterns of metabolism in different parts of the brain required for different activities, such as throwing a football, reciting a speech or recalling a distant memory.

Is a cow actually that genetically close to a human?

Mad scientist Walter Bishop requests a cow for his lab because, he claims, humans and cows are separated by only a couple lines of DNA. It's true that a cow is genetically similar to a human, but real scientists never use the word "line" to refer to DNA--you'd deal in percentages. "The human and chimpanzee genomes are roughly 99-percent identical, the mouse and human genomes are 70-percent identical, and the cow is somewhere in between," says Timothy Bestor, a professor of genetics and development at Columbia University Medical Center. "They probably share upwards of 90 percent of genes, but each of those genes can differ markedly in sequence."

No species is a perfect model organism for people, but cows better mimic the situations a scientist might be studying, and their large size makes testing easier--cow hearts are often used to assess human cardiovascular conditions, for example. Although mice aren't as close to people as cows, they represent the best compromise: They are extremely cheap and easy to manage. "Cows are a thousand times more expensive. If there were no cost constraints, then cattle would be good, and pigs and primates would be better still," Bestor says. "If you were to get a cow, you might as well get a monkey."

Can you interrogate a dead person?

In the pilot's final scene, the dead body of an FBI agent is secretly brought to Massive Dynamic, a mysterious corporation more innovative than Apple and Google combined (just what role the company plays in a series of events known as "the pattern," Fringe's central mystery, remains to be seen). When Massive Dynamic employee Nina Sharp--who boasts a a breakthrough-worthy prosthetic arm--finds out the body has only been dead for five hours, she orders that he be questioned.

It's apparently quite possible to extract information from a corpse as long as it's been dead for no more than six hours--and as long as it's only on Fringe. "There is no way to gather information from a dead person's brain," says Dr. Milstein. "However, if a patient dies suddenly, there is a short period of time--between minutes and hours--during which a neuron might be able to transmit a signal." Nonetheless, Milstein says that without specific pathways set by a living brain, it serves no purpose. The experiment would be similar to sending a current down an electrical wire with nothing attached to either end. Good thing Fringe is far from over. Stay tuned toDigital Hollywood for more.

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